PBS Newshour's Art Beat spoke to NYT reporter John Leland, author of Hip: The History (Harper Collins, 2004), about the pursuit of cool in a pressure cooker of Alt Reports and Hipster Puppies:

"There have always been criticisms that the hipster is just this kind of commercial caricature, someone who is too hip for the room. There was this idea in the 1910s and 1920s that the bohemians of Greenwich Village had just become commercialized. I think Hutchins Hapgood has said, "We need someone to teach us how to spend our war profits," and that's what the bohemians were doing. That idea that 'hip' is just kind of this set of sumptuary laws and it's the emperor's new clothes -- I think that's been around for awhile."

On the emergence of an Iraqi hipster:

"...I had the hardest time explaining the idea of hip or bohemianism to Iraqis because people would ask about the book, and I'd say, "it's, oh yeah, it's this idea about hip." The idea that somebody wanted to be on the outside of the culture made absolutely no sense to them."

Full interview here.